My racing knowledge extends no further than watching le tour each year, since big mig, abdojabarov, and even phil anderson.through the years the attitude to doping has slowly evolved from "hes just come back from a doping ban but thats behind him now*" the way a footballer returns from a crook hammy. to the more modern "cycling used to have a problem with doping, but thats largely a thing of the past*" which has now been around for 10-15 years

* not real quotes but the vibe

however if you look at US baseball, eastern bloc athletics, chinese swimming from a while ago and even swimmings "super suit era" there comes a correction in performance where the athletes collectively can no longer do what the athletes could do quite recently.

Has professional cycling had this revolution of lower performance than it once had, which would be the true sign of a sport being largely cleaned up?

Times for the climbs are higher than they used to be, the riders are back around the theoretical 6W/kg limit rather than the 7W/kg they were getting up to.

But 'clean'? Only in the sense they are not testing positive to banned substances on the WADA list. I was just reading up on sildenafil today, as local riders are known to be using it - not banned... yet.

Average speeds in the Tour de France are down below 40km/h, having gone above 40km/h for the first time in 1999, and stayed there more or less for a decade. The tour changes each year though, so comparisons aren't exact.

Mulger bill wrote:Sildenafil eh? I s'pose it makes them ride a little harder...

fuji shogun wrote:Has professional cycling had this revolution of lower performance than it once had, which would be the true sign of a sport being largely cleaned up?

I think all you can really say is the the doping currently being used isn't quite as effective as it used to be.

But the level of testing/disincentive falls away quite fast from Pro our level down the food chain, and is still highly prevalent at conti level racing, i.e. those that are fighting to step up to Pro Tour contracts.

Heck, another of Armstrong former team mates was done just this week for EPO while racing MTBs.

flow.rider wrote:I think eventually drugs will become one of the accepted norms as will genetic modification of ones body before and after birth.

While there may be various individuals that will be tempted to use PED’s, I believe that for the foreseeable future the use of PED’s in cycling in any organised manner is dead in the water.

Cycling teams at this point in time are under enormous pressure to ensure their riders are clean due to the worldwide condemnation of the LA saga, the reaction of various cycling sponsors to this whole sorry mess, and because cycling sponsors are the lifeblood of professional cycling.

This pressure to perform without illegal enhancement would also be felt by existing professional cyclists, as well as those aspiring to reach that level. Thus ensuring that the use of PED’s will be kept to an absolute minimum, again for the foreseeable future.

In regard to the use of Gene Doping to aid performance, I believe the Olympic Games are the key that to a major extent will dictate what happens to that technology, and its use in boosting athletic performance in all athletic endeavours, including cycling.

Due to the intricate technology involved in Gene Doping, and due to the fact that the financial backing, and in many instances the training of Olympic athletes falls broadly within the sphere of the Governments in many countries, the use of Gene Doping will depend on just how badly these countries want their chosen representatives to be winners at the Olympic Games.

Not only that, the article goes on to say that students are using Ritalin for concentration when studying.

Interesting the dichotomy.

That situation is nothing unusual, and as a youngster you rarely consider the longterm consequences of using some sort of chemical aid to get you through difficult times, or to boost your performance.

Due to an unprecedented set of circumstances, as a 20 year old I was placed in charge as the site foreman of a new and intricate multi storey building construction.

The pressure to be right on top of everything was so intense that particularly during the first 6 months I found myself ingesting up to fifteen 100 mg caffeine No-Doz tablets a day just to stay ahead of the game.

Stupid......off course it was........but I was young, an indestructible superman, and I was on fire.

So yes I do understand the pressure that can cause an athlete, or anyone else for that matter to turn to PED’s to boost performance.........even if it’s just a night out with a new GF.

PEDs in cycling didn't use to mean that much in the old days - amphetamines made riders try to push harder but didn't make them stronger.

since then, steroids, HGH and cortisone have been used, with genuine benefits. but anecdotally, it seems clean riders could still beat users of those drugs, at least in the right circumstances. the wrong circumstances were long stage races, where drugs aided recovery.

the two killer doping products are now EPO and blood bags. in stage races, clean riders have little hope of keeping up with users of these products. these characterised the 'armstrong years'.

more sophisticated tests, particularly the blood passport, have meant that riders can no longer go crazy on those drugs and are now reduced to doping in smaller quantities, in order to maintain some semblance of a 'normal' blood profile. if you believe guys like Cadel are clean (i do), then the evidence suggests clean riders can win against dirty riders today.

the blood passport is a huge blow against dopers, as it bypasses the ridiculous game of catch-up, where new tests for new drugs always lagged their introduction by a period of time. there is apparently as yet no means of 'fooling' the blood passport, as it effectively measures the benefit of doping, rather than the doping products themselves.

You are right about the biological passport being a significant improvement Jules. One benefit that is just starting to be explored is using it to identify suspicious profiles & then deploy conventional investigation techniques - talking to potential witnesses, examining financial transactions, cooperation with other bodies such as customs.

find_bruce wrote:You are right about the biological passport being a significant improvement Jules. One benefit that is just starting to be explored is using it to identify suspicious profiles & then deploy conventional investigation techniques - talking to potential witnesses, examining financial transactions, cooperation with other bodies such as customs.

There are two problems here. First, the biological passport markers for doping are set at such a high level to all but eliminate any chance of false positives that there are many, many, suspicious profiles that will not lead to any sanctions. Second, the UCI still controls drug testing and this leads to bad situations such as Armstrong's ABP being suspicious in 2009 (according to Ashenden, see link below) but nothing being done about it.

If you are looking to pick fault, you don't have to dig that hard - testers turning up in cars plastered with sponsors logos is hardly "unannounced". Not clear whether the reports relate to the race organisers, UCI, WADA or someone else